"Our knives and monsters are ever ready, and as real as we need them to be."

Here's my second audio book review, as my radio station is considering airing them as stand-alone pieces. To encourage them, go to KUSP.org and contact them.

For your on-the-go listening pleasure, then, here is my audio review of Rebecca Lloyd's excellent 'Mercy and Other Stories.' [Written review contains additional material.] Prepare to toss out your preconceptions (if you have them) as to what to expect from Tartarus Press, beyond great quality. Yes, the book has the same wonderful craftsmanship as all the titles from this publisher. But the content comes from a new and very individual voice.

Lloyd's work is considerably different than most other writers who work with or at the boundaries of genre fiction. She has a bit of Angela Carter and Ruth Rendell in her, while still being very much a genre unto herself.

"NOT in a magical thinking sort of way," Kathy Freston is quick to add. And this is one of her many appeals as a writer. Freston, the author of 'Quantum Wellness' and 'The Lean,' takes a low-key approach to the world of self-improvement. She's not about wrenching your life in this direction, or that one. (Though she'd like you to consider being vegan.) That said, everything about Kathy Freston is refreshingly pragmatic.

Well, except when you are sitting at the simply amazing kitchen table in her simply amazing house. Freston tells you, lightly, in her books, that she was once a chain-smoking model. The model part – you'd totally get that. But it's hard to believe that she's ever been much less than perfect. I'll take her word on that. When she starts quoting Socrates, and then citing studies from Cornell University, it all gets pretty surreal.

That said, Freston got where she is and stays there through a both-feet-on-the-ground approach, and that is her appeal. She's not asking you to change everything in your life. She's thinking maybe you can change one thing, a small thing, one day at a time. She's a smart, centered speaker, and I imagine her tours must do well.

Writers in this genre are not my normal remit, but, to my mind, it's healthy (if not infectious!) to jump lanes from one outlook and mood to another. Freston takes her work but not her self seriously, and she has a lot of good ideas. She speaks about them clearly and knows the proper level of detail to accord to anyone subject. She's vegan, but allows that she has in the past loved BBQ pork. (I'm a fan of the Central Texas BBQ in Castroville, CA.) Her thoughts about food sourcing are arguably ahead of their time.

Now, nothing can compare with the actual experience of sitting in that kitchen. But there is a lot to be learned by following this link to the MP3 audio file of our in-depth interview.

Here's the one-hundred eighty-eighth episode of my series of podcasts, which I'm calling Time to Read. these days I actually sort of perform them with the writers as a "lightning round" (thanks David Rich!) after the longer interview.